Fifty Adults, One Lake, Zero Curfews
Year one of Camp Lola Whiskey, a storm rolled in over the Wisconsin Dells like it had a personal grudge.
I stood there watching the sky turn that specific Wisconsin shade of uh oh, holding a clipboard I was no longer consulting, while 30 adults who had paid actual money to be there got rained on next to a fountain that — for reasons that I can explain — was flowing with pickle brine.
And here's what happened next: nobody left, despite me almost getting impaled by the craft tent in the storm. A small group started a wild game in their cabin. People started refilling their drinks in the rain. When the storm cleared, everyone helped with cleanup and setup for our final dinner and dance party.
And one camper was so committed to the weekend that she'd gotten an old fashioned tattooed on her body as soon as she left camp (Megan, you will forever be a CLW legend ✌🏻).
Megan’s fresh ink of a Wisconsin Old Fashioned, our unofficial state drink
That was the moment I knew this thing wasn't a cute experiment.
Adults don't need another networking event or another rooftop happy hour where everyone leaves by 8:30. Adults need recess. And nobody's offering it.
So I built it.
What actually happens at adult summer camp?
Camp Lola Whiskey is a long weekend — August 27–30 this year — at Timber Kove Resort on the water in Hayward, Wisconsin. Fifty campers. Coed. Ages all over the map, though most of us are 35–55: old enough to have stories, young enough to make more. Some come with friends, but most come alone.
Think the summer camp of your childhood, with a serious adult upgrade. Days on the lake, campfires that go too late, camp games you will get inexplicably competitive about, food you'd never find in a mess hall, and drinks from sponsors who take their craft way more seriously than any of us take the kickball score. There's structure when you want it and a hammock when you don't — you can do everything, or you can do genuinely nothing, and both are correct.
What there isn't: team-building icebreakers, a schedule with consequences, or anyone asking what you do for a living before they ask your name.
Where do you sleep? (Because I know that's your real question.)
I hear you — you're a grown-up, and "camp" is doing a lot of suspicious work in that sentence. So let me be plain: you will not be roughing it.
There are no tents to pitch. No sleeping bags on plywood. No bunk beds. No communal showers with mystery drains. And nobody is handing you a canoe paddle at 7am without your enthusiastic consent.
You sleep in actual resort lodging, and you pick your comfort level: the Bunkmate Special if you're game to be matched with new friends, Duo Den to split with someone you bring, or the Solo Sanctuary if your idea of camp includes a door that closes and nobody else's snoring. Matching is done with a questionnaire — thoughtfully, not roulette-style — and a deposit holds your bunk.
Do people really come alone?
Constantly. It's kind of our jam.
Roughly half of camp shows up not knowing a single soul, and by Saturday afternoon you cannot tell who arrived together and who met at check-in. That's not an accident — everything from the roommate matching to the way the first night runs is designed so that walking in alone is the easy version, not the hard one.
Last year's campers are, as I type this, still active in the group chat. They came back home with inside jokes their real-life friends will never fully get (a few of them told the whole story on the podcast, if you want proof from someone who isn't me).
New camp friends on our trolley ride to a supper club
The permission slip nobody gave you
Here's what I've figured out after three years of running this thing: the magic isn't the lake or the campfire or even the pickle fountain (RIP).
It's that somewhere around hour six, fifty capable, competent adults — people who run entire teams and households and their own businesses — remember what it feels like to play. Not perform. Not network. Play. You built a life that runs on your competence. Camp is the weekend that doesn't need it.
Maybe you've been the responsible one so long you can't remember your last cannonball. Maybe your summers turned into a blur of other people's weddings and yard work. Maybe you just miss laughing until your stomach hurts with people who aren't looking at their phones.
That's the itch. This is the scratch.
Camp Lola Whiskey runs August 27–30 in Hayward, Wisconsin. Last year sold out, and this year there are still a few spots left. When they're full, camp's full — the property only holds so many of us, and that's just the truth of it. Last call to book is July 31.
A year from now there will be a group chat full of people howling about whatever this year's pickle fountain turns out to be.
You should be in it.
